Friday morning, I set an alarm for 8:45 AM — long after my actual morning alarm — so that I could be #PREPARED for Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker Forever Merch Drop at 9:00 AM EST. It was the most terrified I have ever been. I sat on my bathroom floor with my heated round brush dangerously close to the edge of the sink, midway through my morning blowout — not to be confused with my morning blowjob, which I save for my roommate, Owen (hey baby, see u later 😉 ;)).
With my laptop open and a 350° hair tool as my emotional support, I refreshed my browser over and over again, begging and pleading with Google Chrome to show me the severely overpriced merchandise I could never wear anywhere in the rural South lest I be doused in holy water and exorcised. I prayed to a God I’m not even sure I believe in. I asked my Jewish and Muslim friends to pray on my behalf, and my atheist friends to recite the scientific method, just to make sure I had all my bases covered. Alas, even my Southern Baptist upbringing was not enough for Mother Cain, as I stared in horror at the words “SOLD OUT” listed beneath the $200 bomber jacket. I wished for nothing more than to be released from my misery and consumed by Isaiah himself.
Whilst I bathed in my melancholy and burnt the fuck out of my hair, I pondered on all of the scenarios that I would encourage one to endure before putting themself through the torturous, gut wrenching, devastating gestation of the Ethel Cain Willoughby Tucker Forever Merch Drop.
1. Your 17th Birthday
There is something uniquely devastating about turning 17, but at least your 17th birthday has the decency to happen only once. You can learn to cope with the awkward cake, the Facebook posts from relatives you haven’t spoken to since birth, and the creeping realization that adulthood is approaching like a tornado. At 17, you may feel like your entire life is over. You are wrong. Your life is very much still going, unlike Willoughby and Ethel’s relationship.
2. Death of Your Childhood Pet
You are six years old. Your backyard is haunted by the absence of a creature who used to protect you from squirrels and sleep at the foot of your bed. Your brother is snot-nosed while sobbing into a dishrag you are staring into a foggy distance, wondering whether anything you love is ever allowed to stay. But your beloved fat brown lab, Chipper, did not cost $200 (#AdoptDontShop), nor did he represent the hollow devastation of an Alabamian teenage situationship. At least there is an ease in knowing all dogs go to Heaven. God doesn’t even know where my bomber jacket is.
3. The First Time You Saw Your Dad Cry
Fathers have three jobs: completing and/or paying for car repairs, cheating on your mother, and punching the TV when Tennessee scores one on Bama. Do note that crying is nowhere to be found in that list. Seeing your dad cry for the first time is therefore an incredibly destabilizing experience. The man who taught you how to change your oil and distinguish between a 10-millimeter and a 3/8-inch socket is now just a quivering little bitch wiping tears off his face with the collar of his tee shirt. And yet, I would rather contend with the reality of my father’s emotions than contend with the reality that someone out there had faster Wi-Fi than me on a Friday morning.
4. 9/11 But Only the First Plane
I don’t need to explain why 9/11 as a whole was terrifying, but I do think there is a unique sort of grief in thinking, “Wow, that might leave me and everyone I know with trauma for the rest of our lives, but at least it won’t happen again!” and then watching it fucking happen again.
You see, dear reader, I had the bomber jacket in my cart. I was in the queue to check out. I was a mere 16 digits of typing away when I noticed my cart amount was not in United States Dollars, but British Pounds. I was forced to empty my cart and reload the tab. I reentered the queue, this time with American pride. As soon as my page read “less than a minute from ordering,” I was notified that the bomber jacket was sold out.
If Bush can be blamed for 9/11, then surely the British can be held responsible for putting my bomber jacket in British pounds and, consequently, depriving me of the American Dream.
5. Listening to Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
Much like Ethel Cain did with Willoughby Tucker, I have spent the better part of my days building my emotional infrastructure around that bomber jacket, and I was forced to cope with emotional and physical destruction much akin to the damage left by the tornado in Shady Grove, Alabama. At least when I listen to Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, I am given the courtesy of having my emotions destroyed on purpose. I was not in my masochistic headspace at 9:03:47 AM EST on that Friday morning. I have, however, been in that headspace ever since.
Perhaps this is what our dear Mother Cain has been trying to teach us all along. We spend our lives constructing elaborate fantasies around the things we love; Ethel had Nebraska, Willoughby, and the belief that if two damaged teenagers loved each other hard enough, they could escape the blood-soaked gravitational pull of their families. Ethel lost Willoughby to the tornado, spent years mourning him, fled Alabama, met Isaiah, was kidnapped, forced into sex work, drugged, murdered, and cannibalized.
I had a bomber jacket in my digital shopping cart, was forced to empty it and subsequently lose the jacket, and I burned my forehead with my heated round brush. Who, really, can say which of us suffered more?
Either way, I will always love you, Willoughby Tucker. But I will never forgive you for selling out before I could check out.
Events Less Devastating Than Ethel Cain’s Willoughby Tucker Forever Merch Drop
